


Who Were You Before They Touched You (Pressed You Into The Quiet Concave Of The Earth)

by Iamasortofvillain



Series: Love And Ownership Couldn't Be More Opposite [3]
Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, One Shot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn, Porn with Feelings, Shameless Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:55:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28739832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamasortofvillain/pseuds/Iamasortofvillain
Summary: A vague attempt at plot more like an excuse to indulge in Damie's smut with added angst, because they were scared before they were happy
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie
Series: Love And Ownership Couldn't Be More Opposite [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103900
Comments: 17
Kudos: 85





	Who Were You Before They Touched You (Pressed You Into The Quiet Concave Of The Earth)

**Author's Note:**

> I am me  
> and we have to be apart  
> together  
> \- Azra Tabassum

You're in a typically American diner, somewhere on a lonely strip of road between two equally lonely towns whose names you can't remember but are marked on Jamie's map.

You're eating a sandwich you'd have considered heavenly a year ago, but now is just a painful reminder of Owen's glorious meals. Jamie is next to you in a warm brown jumper and her hair is a little damp from the shower she took earlier in your small motel room. She looks soft and content and you hate to break her happy plans with too much worrying, but it's something you have to consider.

It breaks your heart.

"Don't you think you'll be happier away from all of this?"

Jamie's hand hover in mid-air, a piece of soggy cucumber hanging off her glistening fingers. She lowers it slowly and licks her lips. The corners are sticky with ketchup.

"Away from what?"

You take a big anxious breath. You don't want it to sound like you're pushing her away, but you also need her to know you won't blame her for wanting something simple, something that doesn't have two different colours in its eyes and a ticking bomb in its chest.

"This," you say softly, not daring to look at Jamie. "Me".

Your heart is hammering heavily against your ribcage, moving up to your throat. It's the last thing you want, letting her go, but you have to be realistic. You don't know how much time you've got and the lingering presence inside your chest is a cloud of pain and darkness and danger.

Jamie is too important, too brilliant, too good to go down with you. It's something you will never allow, for the raging beast inside you to get to her.

"Us?" Jamie's accent twisting the sounds of the short sword and the half sandwich you've already consumed turns in your stomach, making you feel queasy.

"I just wonder if it would be easier… if – if you'd be happier…"

Jamie pushes her plate aside and leans toward you on her elbow. You're sitting close together, and you can feel her warmth on your right side. Jamie looks particularly pale under the harsh fluorescent lighting, nothing of her sun-kissed skin and golden tan visible. She looks small and tired and sad and you figure it wasn't the right time to bring this conversation up, not when you're on the road, not when you still haven't decided which way to turn next, living in cheap motels and two-dollar meals.

The thought of living your life somehow without Jamie is a special kind of pain and the matching shadow of the ghost moves with it, making the pain so much worse.

"Poppins, I'm here. I'm exactly where I want to be. Don't care about what comes next, as long as I'm with you. One day at a time, remember?"

You look at Jamie's beautiful face, at the forced smile she tries so hard to maintain, and you think you're going to be sick. Right here, on the hard leather stool of some nondescript diner in the middle of Nowhere, USA.

"You sick of me, Poppins?" Jamie is smiling but her voice is small, raspy, and tensed like the words don't want to actualise and form meaning. Like she's afraid you might be.

Your head snaps up and with surprising intensity, you say: "No!" and you can't believe this is what she thinks. How can you be? Doesn't she know with her you feel alive, more like yourself than you've ever felt? Just being next to her makes you believe everything is possible, even overcoming your silent dark companion.

You sense this is spiraling out of your control. The sheer look of panic on Jamie's face makes your heart skip a beat. You reach forward and put your hand over hers. Her fingers are cold. Clamping.

"Jamie," you sigh, frustrated with yourself and urgent. "I didn't mean it like that. I said it wrong".

Jamie smiles a trembling smile. You can see she's scared and the fear makes her defensive. Walls go up and the green-grey eyes are so distant she might as well not be sitting next to you at all.

"S'alright," she chokes out and though she's still soft and still reassuring and still very much Jamie, you can see how the fear and sadness morph into anger. She isn't angry with you, though, and it hurts.

"S'alright, Poppins. I understand".

The hardness in her beautiful eyes is your fault and you squirm in your seat. You push the plate aside. Jamie is frowning at you under furrowed brows.

You leave ten minutes later, still bewildered at how wrong this all turned out. Jamie is pressed close to you, fingers clenching into a tight fist. You walk back to your motel in silence. Jamie stares ahead of her into the darkening horizon, starless night. Small cars pass you on the road at your left and you feel like something is broken.

You want to turn and say something, anything to lift the heavy mood that's settled between the two of you. The phantom hands that push Jamie away are painful, but you know her. She needs this, just as much as you do. You can't push into her space after hurting her. You will apologize and explain in time when you reach your room and lock the door behind you, but now you don't say anything.

Jamie needs to recover. You need time to think about how to make it better, how to explain.

You still feel nauseous.

Your motel is cheap but good, as good as roadside motels go in this part of the country. Jamie is still silent as you trudge up the steps. The kidney-shaped pool flickers against the outer walls, surface silvery, and dirty.

When you're inside, Jamie moves to the bathroom as if in a haze, and you sit on the edge of the bed. The room smells of cigarette smoke and peppermint and Jamie's perfume. You shed your coat on the bed beside you.

You don't want to keep this up. You want to hug Jamie and coax her out of her closed misery. You want to forget you ever suggested something so stupid. It's obvious to you neither one of you is going anywhere. Jamie is too stubborn and loving and _Jamie_ to even consider her life can be easier, and you're not going to give up on her so easily, not now when you found her, not when she's so close. Not when you know how it feels to love and be loved by her in more than just one way.

Jamie exists in the bathroom wearing an old ratty tee, socks, and black shorts. She falls back on the hard squeaky mattress, bouncing slightly. You turn to her.

"Jamie?"

"S'all good, Poppins." She reaches for the book on the nightstand, a yellowed copy she picked at the second-hand book store you visited the day before, somewhere between towns. she begins to flip through it, ignoring your sigh.

And so you kneel at the edge of the bed, knees brushing against Jamie's toes.

"Can we talk about this?"

Jamie flips a page, the tattered cover obscuring her face. "Nothing to talk about, Poppins. Told ya already, didn't I? No one is going anywhere. I know what I signed up for. Thought you did, too".

"I do!"

"So what's there to talk about, then?"

You exhale a breath and Jamie finally lowers her book.

"Do you want to leave?" She asks in a low whisper, a barely-there sound of complete desperation, so soft you have to lean in to hear it and Jamie's face is blank. You look at her, quiet and sort of scared and nothing like the brave Jamie you came to know.

You meet her eyes but she looks down, as if afraid of what she might see in your eyes. This is insane. This is not what you were implying, ever. This is the farthest thing from what you want.

Jamie bites her lip to stop herself from saying any more and you watch the play of emotion over her face. You want to reach out and pull Jamie in, but there are things you've learned about Jamie and when she wants to be touched, and when she needs space, and right now it's the latter. So you swallow the panic and the anxiety and the sadness and say lightly, casually.

"You're my best friend. And I love you so much. I have never loved anyone the way I love you. I'm – " Jamie looks at you, reckless and ridiculous and unthinkable. You just have to get her to understand. "I just want you to be happy. And, and I'm scared that you won't be. With me".

Jamie is smiling a small smile and you smile through tears, something big and almost happy to coax one of her beautiful, radiant ones.

But Jamie is still a little shaken. Still a little somber and when she tries to talk her raspy voice breaks.

"Jamie…"

"Dani, we're okay," she sounds so broken, so wild and you can't not reach out and touch her. Jamie squeezes your fingers.

"It's going to be okay," she says.

"You can't always think the worst," she says.

"We don't know what anything of this means," she says and you close your hand over Jamie's raised knee. She's hurt and she's comforting you because the one thing Jamie is terrified of seems so certain and inevitable.

There is a monster inside you and it's eating you alive. In a year or in ten, you will not be able to fight her anymore and you will have to leave Jaime, you will have to hurt her.

Jamie, as if reading your mind, dart from your hand to your face.

"We can have so many years together," she blinks back tears and you think you can count on one hand the number of times you've seen her this vulnerable. "Dani," it's soft, so soft, and she looks so young. There is a pressing urgency to Jamie.

"We can have so many years," you know she says it to comfort herself just as much as she says it to comfort you. You look at her for a long time, feeling a hot stinging behind your eyes, the fizzy bubble of tears in your throat and you will yourself not to cry.

"One day at a time, Poppins. Nobody's got forever".

Rather than crying, you move up the bed until you're right next to Jamie, your knees next to her chest, the tips of your long golden hair falling against Jamie's shoulder.

Jamie looks up at you, her stormy eyes big and watery and you know she's still a little hurt and still a little scared and still a little wild from the conversation. And so you lean down, until your mouth just a breath away from Jamie's and you ask in a quiet voice if you can kiss her now.

Jamie nods, just once, and you lean down and place the gentlest of kisses against her lips.

"I'm right here," you whisper against her mouth. "And I'm not going anywhere if I have a say in it".

"Don't ask me to leave," Jamie whispers and you almost choke.

"Never," you reply in a heated sort of hiss. " _Never_. We stay together, however long we've got".

A heartbeat passes and Jamie reaches up and brings your mouth down. except this time, the kiss is hard, crushing, as if she's daring you to pull away.

You don't.

Instead, you gasp into Jamie's open mouth, allowing yourself to devour. Do be devoured. The kiss tastes of desperation and love. You half expect to taste a hint of possession, of a need to ground the both of you, to hear the unspoken _mine_ , but there is none. Jamie is as good as her word. Love is not the same as possession and neither one of you is confused as to what loving the other means.

Still, there is a shared fear, a shared lust, a shared _need_ to get closer and Jamie tangles her fingers in your hair and tugs at your lower lip with her teeth, sucking and biting and all you can think is _yes. You and me. For however long we've got_.

Your tongue is suddenly heavy with words like _us_ and _together_ and _love, love, love_. you don't say it. You don't say anything (mostly because Jamie has taken to sucking on your tongue and raking her nails down your back) but also because now is not the time.

You whimper slightly because Jamie's grip is tight and it hurts in the best kind of way.

The thought of Jamie without you is a very specific kind of pain, the kind that makes you want to throw yourself at the feet of something ancient, some unnamed deity, and bemoan the unfairness of it all, the kind of pain that makes you wish you could live forever.

But you can't live forever, not even for Jamie and you're twisted in guilt and sadness and lust and _so much love_ you pull at the hem of Jamie's thin t-shirt, pushing it up past her breasts and over her head of messy curls.

You move between Jamie's knees. This is the closest you've ever been to divine and you say in a breathless sort of way, "we belong together. You and me. You and me".

And Jamie juts her hips up in a wordless reply. You move down and place a soft kiss against Jamie's ankle, against her calf, against the ticklish spot behind her knee. Jamie squirms and you kiss her again and again and again, moving up her thigh until Jamie's breath comes out in intermittent pants.

You like the fact that you can make Jamie pant and gasp and cry. Jamie, with so much more experience, with a history of girls under her fingertips, losing it on your inexperienced fingers.

Jamie's legs tremble as your mouth closes over her. She throws her arms above her head, and, white-knuckled, her fingertips push against the chipped head-board of the old bed. Your cloudy mind is somehow aware of the incessant sounds the mattress makes, but you can't bring yourself to care.

(Danielle, you know, would probably be terrified. To Dani, all that matters is the way Jamie tastes against your tongue, the way Jamie clamps her thighs against your head, Jamie's skin hot and flushed against your cheeks).

You suck and lap and just when Jamie begins to make that specific breathy moan that you've learned to listen for, you curl two fingers forward just the right way.

And Jamie moans so loud it's almost a scream.

You barely raise your head when Jamie lifts herself up on her elbows and pulls you up, kissing you thoroughly before pushing you onto your back, with a bounce of the mattress. Somewhere between this, your clothes have dematerialised and you don't really mind, because you'd rather keep your focus on _Jamie only Jamie only Jamie_ , than try to remember when exactly did you shed your skirt and blouse off.

Jamie straddles you, leaving a warm, wet trail on your lower abdomen, and then your stomach as she inches up. Instinctively, you grab onto Jamie's hips, and though this isn't exactly what she had in mind (you can tell by her surprised beautiful eyes), you urge her on in an erratic rhythm. Jamie bends down to kiss you sloppily, half-heartedly, too confused to apply any real skill.

You shift and push Jamie back, maneuvering the both of you so that you can feel Jamie against you. she inhales sharply at the sensation and bites down to keep herself from crying out. You smile at her, big and happy, and you notice her cheeks are burning up, red and flushed.

The walls are thin and you're both making too much noise.

Jamie leans forward to brace her palm flat against the wall and finds a steady, practiced rhythm. Fragments of sweet, familiar oblivion, and then you feel the build of pressure inside and you arch up, reaching out blindly to pull Jamie into a kiss.

You want her close as she breaks apart. You want Jamie to catch every piece of you and put you back together again.

Slowly, the swirling colours behind your eyelids fade to black and you blink and fins your vision obscured by the mess of brown curls over your eyes, in your mouth. Jamie smells like fresh earth and like the first rain and like sunscreen and you drag a lazy finger down her side. She squirms and you put your hands on her waist, reassured by the sweaty solid weight of Jamie's body tangled up in yours.

You lie there until your leg starts cramping and you shiver under the growing coolness of Jamie's skin.

The mattress groans from exertion as you push Jamie gently off of you and she rolls onto her side, face blissed out and turned to you. She isn't looking at you, though, her eyes are closed and she looks half-asleep. Still, she wiggles forward, fitting herself against your body in a move you somehow managed to perfect in just a few short months.

You watch Jamie's eyelids flicker and her nose twitch and Jamie shuffles closer, burying herself against your body.

You don't know how long you stay like that, you just absorb in each other. Eventually, Jamie drags her fingers on your shoulder and her voice is a raspy whisper, from overuse and nature.

"We might not have forever, but you're my forever, Poppins. If it's enough for you, I reckon it's enough for me".

Jamie blinds open her eyes and looks at you for a long time before you lean forward and place a soft kiss against the tip of her nose.

"It's enough for me".

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> English is not my first language, and also I'm rocking ADHD like a MF so please excuse any and every misspellings, mistakes, and other Grammarly atrocities.  
> Also,  
> Come chat with me @ love-jesus-but-i-drink-a-little.tumblr.com


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